Everyone who is upset about the REAL ID act I mentioned on Monday needs to immediately head over to ArsTechnica, and read this story, written by Hannibal:
The big news of the past two days is the impending passage of the Real ID act. I’m going to spare you any kind of detailed analysis of the ID and database aspects of this bill for two reasons a) they’re already covered very well in sources I’ll list below, and b) this bill contains a truly bizarre provision that caused a run on tinfoil hats in the blogosphere when it was first introduced, but has now dropped out of all coverage of this bill that I’ve read so far. (You’d think a clause that uses an obscure and never-before-invoked part of the Constitution to place the secretary of DHS above both the Supreme Court and the Constitution itself would get more coverage, but more on that in a moment.)
More on that, indeed.
Section 102 of H.R. 418 would amend the current provision to require the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive any law upon determining that a waiver is necessary for the expeditious construction of the border barriers. Additionally, it would prohibit judicial review of a waiver decision or action by the Secretary and bar judicially ordered compensation or injunction or other remedy for damages alleged to result from any such decision or action.
To understand what this business about prohibiting judicial review means, you have to know two things. First, you have to know a bit about the contested history of judicial review. Depending on who you talk to, the Federal judiciary’s power to overturn a law or to put a stop to an official act of government on the grounds that the law or act is unconstitutional and/or a violation of basic rights is either a core constitutional principle that ensures the rule of law and protects the rights of minorities from the “tyranny of the masses” (e.g. from Brown v. the Board of Education to Roe v. Wade) , or it’s an affront to democratic governance and the chief enabler of left-wing “judicial activism.”
Okay, prohibiting judicial review of anything is absolutely insane. Without judicial review of laws, how to we have a balanced government? How do we protect our constitutional rights when unconstitutional laws are passed? How do we prevent the tyranny of the majority? Does this mean that the United States ceases to be a nation of laws, and becomes a nation of men?
Let’s look back at what I wrote on Monday:
The US Congress, the lawmakers who derive their power from the consent of the governed, are about to take a huge step toward turning our country into a police state, and they’re doing it without any debate at all.
It’s bad enough that Congress passed legislation which fundamentally changes our right to privacy, and possibly violates the Fourth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution, but they’ve also taken away our access to the courts (right now it’s just in cases related to this loosely-defined “expeditious construction of the border barriers”, but don’t think for a second that it will stop there) and they did it without a single word of debate. That these provisions — which are overwhelmingly opposed by the a vast majority of Americans — were snuck into a must-pass bill, and passed without debate is irresponsible at best, and criminal at worst. This is not democracy. This is fascism.
You should really read the whole story, where Hannibal sums it up for us:
Congress has crafted a completely unprecedented provision that guts the principle of judicial review by granting the DHS secretary complete and total immunity from the courts when it comes to the construction of “barriers and roads” in this one specific geographical region, and they’ve buried this provision inside a national ID card act which is itself attached to a large military appropriations bill that no Congressperson in their right mind would vote against (money for the troops and all that).
[. . .]
As a postscript, the icing on the cake of this whole thing has to be the way that the Republican sponsors of the bill actually voted down a proposed provision in the national ID card part of the law that would prevent the government from using the Real ID database as a national database of gun owners
Of course. Why am I not surprised? The Republicans in Congress don’t care at all about upholding the Constitution. They have abandoned their traditional belief in limited, non-intrusive government. They are the collective bitch of the Extreme Religious Right and groups like the NRA. They are tyrants, and Democrats who allowed this to pass without discussion or debate are cowards.
As I wrote on Monday, the leadership in this Congress is out of touch and out of control. If this doesn’t call for a general strike, I don’t know what does.
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America isn’t about freedom anymore, it’s about making money. If you don’t have money, you don’t matter.
Nobody is going to care about your angry faxes. They didn’t stop an unjust war, they certainly aren’t going to stop this.
It’s too late. The bad guys have already won. Make the best life for yourself that you can, but get over the idea that you have any meaningful input into how you are governed.
OK, everyone now, especially you leftist liberals who populate this place – breath deeply, talk a walk and have a cold glass of water.
It’s time for a reality check.
This is not a republican problem – none of you were bitching about the democrat problem when they controlled congress for 40 odd years, nor did you whine and cry when Billy Boy was attemtping to ruin the country.
The answer to this is to get involved, contact your rep’s no matter which party they belong to and tell them what you want.
Breath deeply again, sit back and relax.
This is the scary part for all of you.
The Republican party won. They have the white house and both houses and with any luck, the supreme court pretty soon as well.
The dem’s have had the opportunity to screw the country for may decades (especially you liberals) now it is the republicans turn to roll the screw ups back and destroy the welfare state the liberals have created.
The problems congress has now with the ID bill, etc., were created by ALL the politicians, not just the republicans. If the republicans got it passed by attaching it to another piece of legislation, so be it. Did you piss and moan when the Dem’s did the same with countless pieces of their own legislatoin when they were in control?
probably not.
You people made this mess, you people didn’t stop YOUR party from the same abuses you are crying about the republicans doing.
Cheney in ’08!
Since yesterday, everyone is still ranting and raving, arguing who is at fault. Guys (and gals), WE are at fault. Not just Republicans, but Democrats and Independants, alike. We get caught up in the political whirlwinds created by politicians that divide us, thus distracting us from the truth. Truth: politicians, whether elected or appointed are only concerned with maintaining and increasing their own personal base of power. And here we are doing it again. We are so caught up in finger pointing and blame gaming that we have lost sight of what, so far, each and every one of us is in AGREEMENT over, which is none of us likes the ID Card. Let’s do something about it. Quit bitching at each other about who did what to who, and create a mastermind focus group. Figure out a solution.
Indeed, it may seem that the prohibition of judicial review is insane; however, Article III, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution provides, “the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”
Indeed, Congress does have the authority, granted to them by our founding fathers, to withhold Law from the review of the Supreme Court.
It’s not like any of the left or right extremists here give a FUCKING RAT’S ASS about parts of the contitution they don’t like. Each side would rewrite the country in the only way they see it, WITH BLINDERS ON.
I would also like to ask that anyone who didn’t vote in the presidential/congressional elections to shut their pie hole and take whatever comes their way: You didn’t get off your Dairy Queen laden asses to have your voice heard in the polling booth, so why should anyone give a whit what you have to say now?
As a musician, I was told that before I could say a particular piece of music was too hard or “sucked”, I had to prove I could play it. Now I issue a similar challenge to you “armchair Bolsheviks”:
Before you call to tear down the system, at least make an attempt at being a part of it. Run for office, even a local one. If you have such fantastic fucking arguments, then get out there and drum up support. If you feel as though you have the ideals of the people behind you, then push for a change from within.
If you just have a powerful voice, anger, and a desire to raise hell, you’re just another thug in a mob.
“This is our life on Holiday”
B. J. Armstrong
Hey folks,
I’ve noticed a general preponderance of fingerpointing here. This is getting us nowhere. I think what Wil was trying to point out is this is no longer the fault of the Republicans or Democrats. This has become the fault of the government as a whole. Forget party lines. Forget all the lines. This is a matter of the government no longer being accountable to the people. I’m not a patriotic person, but this isn’t the country that people have fought, bled, and died for anymore. And it’s up to those of us whose eyes are open enough to see that to do something about. We need co-operation, not bickering. We all agree something is seriously wrong. So forget about responsibility and do something about it. Write to your congressman and senator and tell her/him you are seriously upset. Forget blaming anyone and just stand up and say no. If you keep looking for the scape goat, this will all be over before we can stop it.
WWdN is much better when it’s not political.
Wil,
Please step out of your bubble every once in awhile. I guess I could be considered a member of the NRA and the “religious right” and this whole idea of a national ID card scares the hell out of me and angers me to a point beyond words. I don’t know of any friends or neighbors who agree with it. Stop blaming groups of Americans with different ideologies than yourself and look at the real culprits…men with power that want more. Red or blue, it makes no difference.
Wil,
Two quick observations:
1. No one seems to have posted the entire wording of the section of the bill pertaining to “roads and barriers” so those postulating that it’s merely the tip of the iceberg and easily susceptible to “bracket creep” into other abuses of power are without much foundation.
2. I agree with your blogger friend at the Middle Ground or whatever the “intellectually honest” site is, that the intentions of this are likely not evil. So I am disappointed to read your repeated accusations of Fascism….
Oh! Weary do I grow of men
Who cast an ire on others’ sins.
That stamp a foot for noise to make,
But turn with the wind when grounds do quake.
And when rights are diminished between these shores
Stand beside their political whores.
Whether red or blue, may it be understood
The harlots watch out for their own good.
So when your rights are trampled down
You must stand up and make a sound.
But you should never stand by yourself
But try to find someone else
Whose belief in THIS cause is true to yours
And then you can abolish political whores.
JayEP
Dear Wil,
Your post motivated me, as a fellow Californian, to contact Senator Boxer and voice my dismay at yet another blatent attempt to subvert our Constitution by the Republican political elite.
Thanks so much for bringing this issue to your readers’ attention. Hopefully, more folks will stand up and say, I’m MAD AS HELL AND I WON’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!
Dierdra
buildersent: Agree with everything you say, except for the last sentence. I’m holding out for Condi Rice. (Yes, I know she said she wouldn’t run, but she has plenty of time to change her mind.) Wouldn’t that just bake the Dems’ noodles…
Keith: I’m all for strictly limited government, which is in fact a “conservative” virtue…one that many Republicans seem to have forgotten about.
I’m not posting an opinion on the RealID bit itself, but I DO have a couple of things to point out.
– NY state is already violating this bill that isn’t a law yet, since they are ordering their Licensing Offices to refuse to ask for ID on renewals/applications… there’s talk that the gov would pull NY’s federal funding for ALL roads should they do this, so this will boil to a head sooner than later, I think.
– What’s all this banter about the Republicans with this bill? How it’s their bill and their push, and their Evil… All this research and you missed something: why did this bill pass *unanimously* in the Senate if it was all about the Republicans? (And yes I mean their Evil not they’re evil – it’s on purpose) I know they have a majority but there’s at least 40 Democrats in there that voted for this bill: it takes a full 100 to be unanimous – no votes don’t qualify.
JM2C.
Two quick comments:
1) To Randy and Mike: while Wil did castigate the Republicans (who, in all fairness, were the source of the initital bill), he also called the Democrats a bunch of cowards. I would extend that to see-no-evil, bewildered, uncomprehending cowards. Mike’s point, that is all about “men with power who want more” is really the core problem here. . . .
2) To David in Atlanta: I don’t recall anyone being singled out as a “fascist” (and definitely not a “Fascist”); rather, the general comments are about this bill as a step in the direction of fascism as a political ideology that underlies more and more of what the folks in power are doing. I don’t think that ANY of this is innocent, and even if by some chance it is, its ramifications are so potentially devastating to our personal and civil liberties that those who voted for this bill either know that all too well, or are not too sharp on the uptake. Either way, it does not endear them to me as political leaders. . . .
It’s the Corporate State, Stupid
Full Text here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7260.htm
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” – Benito Mussolini.
The early twentieth century Italians, who invented the word fascism, also had a more descriptive term for the concept — estato corporativo: the corporatist state. Unfortunately for Americans, we have come to equate fascism with its symptoms, not with its structure. The structure of fascism is corporatism, or the corporate state. The structure of fascism is the union, marriage, merger or fusion of corporate economic power with governmental power. Failing to understand fascism, as the consolidation of corporate economic and governmental power in the hands of a few, is to completely misunderstand what fascism is. It is the consolidation of this power that produces the demagogues and regimes we understand as fascist ones.
While we Americans have been trained to keenly identify the opposite of fascism, i.e., government intrusion into and usurpation of private enterprise, we have not been trained to identify the usurpation of government by private enterprise. Our European cousins, on the other hand, having lived with Fascism in several European countries during the last century, know it when they see it, and looking over here, they are ringing the alarm bells. We need to learn how to recognize Fascism now.
Dr. Lawrence Britt has written an excellent article entitled
Congress makes the Baby Jesus want to drink gin out of the cat bowl.
*picking up my pitchfork*
STRIKE!!!
The judicial review point in the post is just wrong. Totally, outrageously wrong.
The statute bars lower federal courts from reviewing the matter. It does _not_ withdraw judicial review. Judicial review continues to exist, but at the Supreme Court level.
This is fine and dandy, constitutionally – the lower courts exist only because Congress chose to make them. They could be eliminated entirely without offending the constitution, and indeed are structured completely differently today than they were for the first century after ratification.
I’m also rather sure that the statute doesn’t bar judicial orders of _compensation_ for construction of the barrier. If it did, then it would violate the Takings clause of the 5th Amendment, which forbids the government from taking private property for public use without compensation.
Rather, what the statute is about is procedure, and in particular about takings and environmental procedure.
Today, as a matter of course, suits are brought to prevent significant construction and development projects. Sometimes these suits are brought for legitimate environmental reasons, or for erroneous (but good faith) environmental reasons.
The second type of suit, I assure you, is very real, and indeed much more common than the first.
More often, though, these suits have to do with local landowners trying to get as much money as possible out of the developer or the government.
For example, its one thing to bring suit and argue that the barrier means paving over the only habitat of a rare bird. Its another thing to bring suit and claim that construction must be stopped immediately and for three years because the Environmental Impact Statement failed to take into account that the barrier will mean less traffic and therefore less smog and a better environment.
When the issue is the taking of private property for public use, its common for landowners to bring suits arguing that the government improperly calculated the boundaries of the development, that it failed to give enough time for public comment of its decision to declare an area blighted, that failing to take one parcel of land won’t damage the development as a whole, and so forth.
All that is at stake in these suits is whether the landowner gets compensated after the construction by a court or whether they can demand a premium by holding the entire development hostage in court.
The idea of the bill is simply to bar injunctions, orders preventing the construction from going forward. Those injunctions give the landowners tremendous leverage – “pay me X or I’ll hold up this construction for years in court.”
The idea of the bill is this: The barrier will be built immediately, and if someone’s land was taken they can sue and get paid compensation, but they cannot bring lawsuits trying to prevent the construction from occurring or claiming that the construction should take place somewhere else.
In that respect (if only that one), the statute makes perfect sense.
The simplest way not to worry about this is to remember that just because Congress attempts to withhold access to the courts in this fashion does not mean that they actually have the power to do so.
People can claim the Supreme Court has no power of judicial review, but factually speaking, they do: they are the final arbiters of the meaning of the Constitution. This neo-conservative trend of railing against judicial review is just plain silly: to say that the Court lacks such power would effectively overturn every major Court decision from Marbury v. Madison onwards.
If this law turns out to be unconstitutional, it will still be overturned, despite any hollow pretense on the part of Congress.
How is it that people never learn from history? We have become so apathetic over the last 20 or 30 years and then we end up with a bad president, possibly the worst one ever, who no less got re-elected and a bad congress to boot. I heard the senate vote was unanimous for this act. As someone who had campaigned actively for Democrats last year, I feel disgusted at that notion.
Ok. Stupid me. I didn’t realize that it was attatched to an appropriations bill when I wrote my earlier post.
OK. Time to respond to some of the wonderful attacks.
First, to Alun…
If you had bothered to read the whole scopes link that you were so kind to provide, you would have found THIS little tidbit:
“Like a fable, the “boiled frog” anecdote serves its purpose whether or not it’s based upon something that is literally true.”
IT IS A METAPHOR, you stu… Oh never mind.
And to Alibaba who accuses me of being “representative of the type of left-wing radicals with whom he no doubt keeps company.” How the hell would YOU know who I keep company with. Those types of slurs don’t prove anything.
And mostly, to those who keep pointing to the 100-0 vote.
DO YOU HAVE A FU&%ING CLUE WHAT A “MUST PASS” BILL IS? It is a bill that it would be “political suicide” for anybody (even a radical like Barbara Boxer) to vote against, because it would immediately get every member of the MSM (that’s right, the RIGHT-WING DOMINATED MAIN STREAM MEDIA) to call you “unpatriotic” or “a conspiracy nut” or “anti-American” or “a highly partisan obstructionist (even though the entire PROCESS of politics in the US is set up to be partisan). And that would be followed by tv advertisements run by national right wing organizations not tied to your opponent during the next election cycle saying the same thing, but in even more vitriolic words and pictures. Don’t doubt they would have pictures of soldiers with legs missing coffins and “Senator X voted against these brave men and women.” THAT is American political history, whether it was Dems or Reps doing the nasty work. So, once it was tagged onto a “must pass” piece of legislation, it was either going to pass 55-45 or 100-0, but either way it was 100% the Republicans who made it happen.
Now, on to the final item. Why am I so pissed at the Republicans? Maybe because they stole an election in 2000? Maybe because they LIED a thousand times, beginning on September 11, 2001 and up to today. Maybe because they stole ANOTHER lection in 2004 (EXIT POLLS DO NOT LIE! EVER! THEY NEVER HAVE! THEY ARE INCREDIBLY ACCURATE SCIENCE.)? Maybe because they called us “unpatriotic,” “unAmerican” and “vile” when we questioned the war in Iraq, and then they sent our boys and girls off without the tools they needed? Maybe because they have co-opted the media to their own ends and made it into a propaganda machine to serve their purposes? YES, damn it, I am very angry, and I am angry at REPUBLICANS because they are the ones doing it. Are Democrats the long-term answer? DEFINITELY NOT! They are corporate owned and just as vile. Kerry sold us out when he conceded the day after the election was stolen from him out of fear of being labeled “a sore loser.” (Hmmm. I notice that Rossi in Washington doesn’t seem to care about that.)
The answer will not be with Democrats, but with progressives who are not bought and paid for before they arrive in Washington. And mostly, it will begin with FAIR ELECTIONS where everybody is given a chance to vote (no ten hour lines in the rain, no massive voter roll purges, votes for felons who have done their time [including probation], and no throwing out votes where the person checks one box and also writes in THE SAME NAME) and every vote is counted fairly, and not by three companies all tied to the Republican party and with significant motive to cheat.
Anybody who says they support the Republican party and what it is doing to this country I love so much is my enemy. I love the Constitution of the United states and its amendments! That is my bible. That is my faith. One of the purest and most incredible documents ever written, designed to create a noble and powerful CENTRAL government to hold together an ugly consortium of states with a variety of vile habits and histories.
Republicans are the enemy. When the battle lines are finally drawn, I will stop being a pacifist. I will leave my “NO WAR IN IRAQ” bumper sticker on my car — will you leave your “W04” sticker? I hope so, as I wouldn’t want to accidentally help the wrong person to move to their next body.
Charlie L
Portland, Oregon
I think it’s interesting Chas left off his hate speech tagline, yet leaves us this final thought:
Republicans are the enemy. When the battle lines are finally drawn, I will stop being a pacifist. I will leave my “NO WAR IN IRAQ” bumper sticker on my car — will you leave your “W04” sticker? I hope so, as I wouldn’t want to accidentally help the wrong person to move to their next body.
You have stepped beyond the boundaries of hyperbole: You are advocating murder based on a political belief. I suppose you could kill them all much better of you rounded them up into camps, set-up kill stations and had the ones that weren’t too weak to pile their kinsmens’ corpses into mass graves.
You are the problem, Chas. Not people LIKE you. YOU. You’re the thug looking for an excuse to kill people. A sociopath, or to be more precise, a politicopath. Stalin would be swelling with pride.
I won’t resort to aimless meanderings about how I’ll slay someone for the candidate he or she chose, I’ll simply as that you get mental help quickly before your powderkeg in that noggin of yours takes you into the nearest belltower with a rifle, serving to only discredit the beliefs you enumerate in the manifesto they find next to your bullet-riddled body.
A Republican-Democratic civil war could only be hilarious. After all, only one side has the guns.
If you had bothered to read the whole scopes link that you were so kind to provide, you would have found THIS little tidbit:
“Like a fable, the “boiled frog” anecdote serves its purpose whether or not it’s based upon something that is literally true.”
IT IS A METAPHOR, you stu… Oh never mind.
(Sigh.)
Yes, obviously it’s generally presented with allegorical intent (though, incidentally, there’s a difference between an “allegory” and a “metaphor”). However, it was also presented as fact, which it isn’t. You didn’t say “They say if you put a bunch of frogs…”; you didn’t say “The story goes that if you put a bunch of frogs…”; you said “If you put a bunch of frogs…”; you stated it as if this were factual.
I was not attacking the allegorical intent behind your inclusion of the frog story in your message. I was, in fact, explicitly trying to stay out of that part of the debate. Hence my stating “Just for the record” at the end–i.e. that I was presenting this only as a statement about the frog story itself, and in no way as an attempt to attack the point you were trying to make with it. Yes, I did read the entire Snopes article, of course. Did you read my entire reply? (Sheesh.)
Whoops…the entire first three paragraphs in that last post were, of course, quoted and should have been italicized. I need to be more careful with my previewing…
Thomas and Alun:
Don’t think it doesn’t bother me greatly that the disgusting and anti-American actions of the current Republican Regime in Washington has driven me to such an INTENSE HATRED of Republicans (and all those who support them) that I would believe myself eventually capable of putting aside my life-time of pacifism and taking up arms to destroy those whom I consider the enemies of my nation’s liberty.
Were the members of the German underground evil for wanting to kill Nazi’s and members of the SS? That is the analogy (or is it a metaphor? or a simile? DO YOU THINK I FU#&ing care?).
Have I mentioned lately how much I TOTALLY HATE you vile and disgusting Republicans? Your lies? Your cheating? Your evil intentions against my great country and constitution that so many have died, lost limbs and bled to protect?
WHEN (IF?) it comes to battle in the streets, I consider that those who keep their “emblems of pride” (such as the W’04 sticker) on their SUV’s are the ones with so much confidence in their fascist regime’s power to protect them that they really ARE the enemy. WHEN (IF?) it comes to that, and I have truly given up my pacifism, then YES, I will do what has to be done.
Should we have all just rolled over and let Hitler have the world, because to kill those who supported him would have been wrong? Is that the answer? OH, I guess if you are a Christian Dominionist, then YES, because that will bring about the rapture sooner.
OH, and for those who missed it, here is my “hate speech tagline.” OF COURSE, I don’t really see how it is “hate speech.” I just point out the TRUTH (Republicans lie, steal and cheat. All quite easily provable.) and suggest a recourse.
Here’s to DEMOCRACY! Here’s to every voter getting to vote and every vote being counted! Here’s to getting the hell RID of the Republican thugs who control my country.
The Days of Decision are coming.
We are frogs begin slow-cooked, and by the time we realize the water is boiling, we won’t have the strength to jump out of the pot. Perhaps we already don’t.
Charlie L
Portland, Oregon
[email protected]
Republicans lie and innocent people die.
Republicans steal and give to their rich friends, leaving just an IOU for our kids to pay off.
Republicans cheat and think they are “moral.”
We must flush away all Republicans in ’06 and ’08.
Thomas and Alun:
…
Have I mentioned lately how much I TOTALLY HATE you vile and disgusting Republicans?
Fer cryin’ out loud, what exactly makes you think I’m a Republican? Again, I was only stating that the story of the frog happened to be factually incorrect; I was not attacking the point you were trying to make with it. The fact that frogs don’t really sit and wait to be boiled alive doesn’t invalidate your point, and I wasn’t saying it did.
For the record, although I’ve been trying not to take sides and to stay out of the political debate completely, I actually agree with the point you were trying to make with the analogy. I don’t like what the Republicans are doing; I’m not a Republican; I didn’t vote for Bush or for any other Republican candidates in the last election, and I don’t intend to in the next election either. I actually agree that the country is going in a bad direction. Okay? So can you stop yelling at me now?
Yeesh, man, calm down. Indiscriminately attacking people who aren’t attacking you (just pointing out a minor factual error is not an attack) isn’t helping your case…
My apologies to Alun. I don’t hate you. People can critique without gaining my scorn and wrath of emotion. And if I mis-represented the frog allegory (which I didn’t know had been debunked) as fact-based, then I deserve to be called on it.
There is a lot of conflict right now between those who don’t like the current “reality” and those who have admitted to living in (and creating) their own reality. The biggest problem is that the non-reality people have turned out to be RIGHT about being able to MAKE their own reality, and that has confused all of us for whom reality was always assumed to be more stable.
It makes those of us who are normally quiet, calm, and loving people quite agitated. Of course, I would rather be agitated than apathetic and accepting of this process, but I don’t like the “me” that dealing with this makes me into.
Charlie L
Portland, Oregon
Cheburashka:
Thank you for the legal analysis. That certainly renders the intent of that part of the bill much more understandable. I still wonder about the precedent it sets, but I appreciate you laying out some of the repercussions for us.
When in Doubt, Quote Heinlein:
“When a place get crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it makes it possible to go elsewhere.”
-Lazarus Long
this one makes perfect sense. Wil, do you have any spare starships you can loan me??? 🙂
“A generation which ignores its history has no past and no future”
-Lazarus Long
It’s a sad day when our front-page news is about a “scandal” on American Idol or about Britney Spears saying something to someone. Too many people just don’t care about the things that are really important.
We are already starting down the path that leads to tyranny and oppression by an oligarchy.
Conservatism and Liberalism make no sense in this day and age. A polarized nation will have an extremist government.
You americans need a “centralist” party. one that just does what the situation calls for, regardless if it is a conservative or liberal solution.
but I don’t like the “me” that dealing with this makes me into.
That makes two of us, but something tells me you don’t like the “you” that you see in the mirror regardless of the issue you’re dealing with… and I don’t want to even begin to fathom how many issues you deal with ever waking moment of your piteous excuse of an existence.
The bottom line is that YOU are acting as the vile Stalin, Chas. You are the one calling for the cold-blooded, pre-meditated murder or people based on an political ideal that they have: The ideal that the federal government should be very small and that more power be in the hands of local officials. THAT is the definition of being a Republican. You have, on your own, lumped extremists into the group as a whole.
You, you murderous liberal toadie bastard, should know better, being the first to cry foul when some redneck Bubba says all Muslims are terrorists.
This discussion has been an exchange of ideas, and remains a fine place to vent frustrations, but practicing your hate speech (again, swap out “Jew” or “Nigger” with the word “Republican” so you can see how PAINFULLY hateful your calls for killings are) is the thread’s single point of failure, rendering the previously stated valid points you may have awkwardly and accidentally stumbled into completely and utterly moot.
Thomas you ignorant slut:
I have never called for the killing of Republicans, and I never would.
I merely said that “when the battle lines are finally drawn…” that __I__ would do what __I__ had to do. What anybody else wants to do is between them and their belief system.
Neo-conservative Republicans and Christian Dominionists are driving this country towards an ugly form of fascism. In fascism, the extremes become more clear — there are those in power and there is “everybody else.” And “everybody else” falls into three categories: those who go along, those who fight, and those who die.
In 1939, if a member of the underground had the opportunity to kill a Nazi SS officer, they would be proud to do it. As a pacifist, I have to be ready to do the same things WHEN we get to that point.
I don’t know what kind of therapy you are getting, Thomas, but I would suggest a request for better meds. You are more than a little passive-aggressive, and it detracts from your totally inane comments.
If you don’t like the fact that Republicans lie, stop being one.
If you don’t like the fact that Republicans steal, stop being one.
If you don’t like the fact that Republicans cheat, stop being one.
But don’t blame ME for pointing it out. It is REALITY, and you can’t un-do it with all the propaganda machines in the world and even a 99% control of all the mass media. You can try, but I won’t let you succeed.
Read the Iraq Memo. Read Sy Hersh. Read the TRUTH!
Charlie L
Portland, Oregon
[email protected]
Republicans lie and innocent people die.
Republicans steal and give to their rich friends, leaving just an IOU for our kids to pay off.
Republicans cheat and think they are “moral.”
We must flush away all Republicans in ’06 and ’08.